More naya than Nouvelle

Indian cuisine is evolving and changing all the time though we don’t always realise it

Goan food is not for everyone. And there is no such thing as ‘Goan food’ anyway. The state has many different cuisines including the excellent vegetarian food of the Saraswats. But when we talk about ‘Goan food’ in the rest of India, what we usually mean is the cuisine of the Catholics. This is popular all over the Western part of India because of the uniqueness of its flavours. It is like the cuisine of the rest of India because it includes masalas. But it is also different because it uses vinegar, an ingredient that does not play a major role in most other Indian cuisines. (In fact, the original Goan vinegar is so crucial to the flavour that the great Cyrus Todiwala of London’s Café Spice Namaste struggled to find substitutes when his supply was restricted during the lockdown.)

I am an unabashed lover of all kinds of Goan cooking. My go-to dish at home, when I am too tired to make anything too complicated, is a simple chorise pulao or a keema curry made on a base of collapsing, melting chorise. At any given time, you can be sure to find lots of chorise in my fridge.

Like most people who love Goan Catholic food, I tend to stick to the real thing. There are great chefs in Goa like Urbano Rego who used to head the Taj’s food operations till he retired a few years ago, and Julia Carmen D’SA, who has now moved to Delhi. A new generation of Goan chefs like Avinash Martins and Rahul

Gomes Pereira is now starting to make waves. (Though Gresham Fernandes, one of the greatest chefs of his generation, now lives in Goa but sadly, hardly cooks!)

Goan food purists are always a little surprised when I say that my favourite Goan restaurant in the world is not in Goa but in Mumbai. It is O Pedro, which was set up by the legendary Goan chef, the late Floyd Cardoz. Floyd wanted it to be a love letter to Goa. He wanted to capture its sense of fun and the joy that Goans took in their food.

Floyd was fortunate to have two great chefs with him when he set up The Bombay Canteen: Thomas Zacharias and Hussain Shahzad. Thomas shone at The Bombay Canteen and Hussain guided O Pedro to huge culinary success. Since Floyd’s tragic passing and Thomas’s departure from the group, it is Hussain who has kept Floyd’s legacy alive.

I went to O Pedro for dinner last week, with the Italian chef Massimo Bottura. Massimo loved it, and I thought the food has never been better. Judging by that night’s experience, Hussain is the best chef currently cooking in Mumbai.

What intrigued me about Hussain’s Goan food (he is not a Goan; he is of Gujarati origin but was born and brought up in Chennai) is the way in which he took Goan food further than I had ever thought possible. The standout dish of the evening was a whole suckling pig that had been stuffed with rice and roasted. Hussain served it with an intense vindaloo gravy. It was, I guess, a pork vindaloo but not the kind you would normally find in Goa.

So, was it authentic? Or was it, as judgmental Indian chefs like saying, ‘fusion’?

I asked Massimo Bottura what he thought. Indian and Italian cuisines have certain parallels. French cuisine is a collection of techniques and not just a bunch of recipes, and chefs are judged

SAY CHEESE

Massimo Bottura celebrated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, which till that time had only been used around the world (as ‘Parmesan’), to top pasta and make simple dishes